Malaysia by accident

When we left Hanoi, Vietnam we flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. From there we were supposed to fly to Bali in Indonesia except we were not allowed to board our plane since we didnt have a departing flight from Indonesia (required by immigration). So we missed our flight and stayed in Malaysia. We explored Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days, and got to see the KL Tower and Petronas Towers (Petronas was the world's tallest builing until 2004).

Merdeka Square in KL

The KL Communications Tower mirrored on a office building, where we toured the observation deck for a superb view of the city.

The Petronas Towers, viewed from the top of KL Tower.

In KL we found Erika's favorite place in the world, Dunkin Donuts

From Kuala Lumpur we headed to the island of Palau Tioman, which is on the east coast. We planned to spend a few days there and liked it so much we stayed for 8 or 9 days. Palau Tioman has a population of only 3000 scattered across 7 or 8 little villages. The entire island is duty free, meaning there is a grocery store in the main town where everything is tax free. Our days in Tioman were mostly spent reading, napping on the beach, and snorkeling. The island is very wild, and where we were staying, jungle took over not more than 300 feet from the beach. We often saw monkeys and monitor lizards from our front porch.

A gorgeous beach on the east side of Tioman, which took a four hour hike to reach from our village.

Enjoying a sunset dinner on the beach

Monitor lizard crossing the "street" (walking path), big ones can reach 6 or 7 feet in length

Monkeys were a common sight right outside our bungalow

We watched the sunset almost every night in Tioman

Rainbows at sunset!

Jungle river that cut right through the village

Erika reading a book on our front porch

The things you'll do for a cold beer: hike 2 miles to the duty free store for a case of 60 cent beers, buy a bag of ice from the restaurant next door, and clean out a bucket full of paint rags and dirt...and voila, cold beers!

From Tioman we went south to Johor Baru, right next to Singapore, to try and find a ferry to Indonesia. This was a hassle and we ended up finding cheap flights from Singapore to Jakarta. We had a few days to kill before our flight so we headed to the west coast city of Melaka, and old colonial port town. In Melaka we visited St. Paul's church/fort built in the 1500's on a hill overlooking the town, and spent a night walking around Chinatown which had a nice street market.

This is a picture of the Prime Minister of Malaysia arriving in Johor Baru...right outside our window.

St. Paul's Church, also used as a fort by the Dutch and British

Inside St. Paul's the walls were filled with old tombstones from centuries of colonial occupation.

After Melaka we bused back to Singapore, and barely made our flight after I was detained at customs for carrying a machete in my backpack (guess thats not quite legal in Singapore!). Everything worked out fine in the end and we are now on the island of Java in Indonesia, making our way east towards Bali.